After a snow-free December this winter has been harder to get rid of than Irish relatives. At least the Divine Comedy deep-freeze has past, but Wiarton Willy fucking LIED. Kill Whitey.
I think I've posted on here about my multiple rounds of rabies vaccinations. One relatively minor side effect is tinnitus (ringing in the ears). The first two times I had the vaccination my ears rang off and on for a couple of weeks, then it went away. After my third round last year, the ringing lasted longer, then went away for awhile. . . . .and my ears have been ringing like a motherfucker for the last week. Its nearly non-stop every waking moment, sometimes loud enough to be distracting. They're fucking ringing like the bells of St. Mary's as I type this. It isn't the worst thing to have happen, but it's still fucked up.
My mutt is laying by my computer chair and just farted. I don't think i am going to be able to smell anything for the rest of the day.
Well I WAS going to go to this all-female comedy show that for some reason was also going to have Lisa Ann there to answer sex questions, but I just looked and saw they're all sold out. So I guess I'm just going to continue sitting here in my pajamas. Boooooo I have been encouraged to share that part of those pajamas is this sweater that is apparently totally see-through. That is a men's sweater. It must've been intended for a super, super gay man.
Blech. Like I said in the other thread, you're still gonna be a hungry man after picking out the edible bits. Stouffer's for the win.
Thos Hungry Man commercials are some of the most unintentionally hilarious bullshit I've ever seen. Straight-up blessed God-awfulness. Never been much of an insta-meal person. I think the broccoli & melted cheese sides Jolly Green Giant make are the bomb, but I remember trying I think Stouffer's pizza once and it could deflect small arms fire. I think the last time I ate a TV-style dinner I was watching a new episode of Airwolf.
Well, here's something interesting (At least to me): About 4 years ago I probably posted about buying the remnants of a sports card dealer's inventory. It was a HUGE haul of cards. I paid $160 for it, because a couple things caught my eye. It wasn't the 1000's of Ken Griffey Jr rookie cards. I gave those away. (They were seriously way over produced and anything from that era was treated as a precious Monet from the get go. Mint examples aren't exactly in short supply. Or demand.) This dealer was from the DC area and had a large number of Cal Ripken Jr rookies. There were right around 100 regular issue Topps, Donruss, and Fleer cards. I sold those on craigslist for $300. (And I threw in about 500lbs of cards and unopened cases of packs just to get them out of my fucking house. I'd already gone through them and verified there was nothing special.) What drew me to the collection was the 10 or 12 1982 Topps Traded sets that had never been opened. That's where the money was, 1982 Topps Traded Ripkens are gold. I grabbed the box fresh Ripkens and sent them off to PSA to be graded. If just one came back a 10, it would've been awesome. They were selling for well over $1.5K at the time. None came back a 10, but I got like 4 9's, a couple of 7's, and the rest 8's. The 9's all sold on e-bay for over $200 each, the 8's pulled in about $150 each, and the 7's about $75. So, tonight I was looking on e-bay and did some checking, the recently sold 9's have been averaging about $170 and the 8's about $80. That's kind of interesting, because I thought the market had bottomed out a few years back. (Word of advice, if you're sitting on a pile of '85-'95 sports cards: Throw them away. I recently picked up two factory sealed 1988 Fleer Glossy sets, which were relatively short printed, for $3.50 each. These sets were well over $100 back in 1988.)
Boy I wish I could go back and kick my ass before spending almost all the money I made on my rather large paper route on baseball cards and comic books. All between 1987-1994. The worst was when I waited in line for 6 hours and paid, I think, $40 for a Jose Canseco autograph after his 40/40 season.
I still have everything I collected in the years 89-91, patiently waiting for them to get magically valuable somehow again. They're not in the way so there's no rush to sell them. My one friend is a comic book artist, he has a table at ComiCon this year so I'm going for the terrific people-watching it provides (and Niagara is fun at night) I mean Hasselhoff is gonna be there who could resist? My friend has all of these very valuable issues and nobody wants to buy them. I remember last time I was inNiagara one booth had at least half a dozen issues of Amazing Spider-Man #1 which is worth thousands. There were several booths like this. If THAT isn't selling who's gonna buy my second-rate shit? Comics are the source that owns blockbuster monopoly over the multi-billions profiting movie industry.
The whole problem is that during those years folks saw what 30 year old stuff was selling for and mistakenly bought up the new stuff thinking it would gain value the same way. The makers of the products saw this going on and ramped up production to ridiculous levels. Everyone bought and horded these "Collectables." Now there are millions of examples of what was the hot thing to buy in 1989 in mint, pristine condition because everyone treated them like they were precious, rare commodities. They're pretty much worthless. In 1989, a decent 34 year old rookie card from 1955 of Koufax, Clemente, or Kaline was selling for about $400. Not a mint, perfect, no flaws card...a decent card with semi rounded corners. By comparison, if you own a 1980 Rickey Henderson rookie card with rounded corners and is now 35 years old, you might see $10 for it. If you're lucky. But I wouldn't count on it.
This talk about baseball cards reminded me of the Magic: the Gathering cards that were stolen out of a rental car back in 1998. I had a pretty nice collection. Just out of curiosity, I went to ebay to see what some of my more valuable cards were selling for, such as this one: Spoiler This card, which has the same grade as mine did, is up on ebay for $11,000. Just for good measure, I had a another edition of the same card, which is going for $4,300. I don't have the stomach to go through and try to figure out what other valuable cards I had are going for, but I estimate the collection I lost is would probably sell for $50k or so.
So you must have had the Alpha set, they were actually in very limited numbers which is why they gained in value. I just checked EBay, I can sell my Griffey 1989 Upper Deck rookies for about 10 bucks. Wow.
That was a Beta Black Lotus. At the time it was worth more than the Alpha version because it was legal for tourney play, while Alpha wasn't due to the Alpha set's rounded edges. My other Lotus was Unlimited. Just thinking about what I lost is making me sick.
Yep. That was a $100+ card not to long ago. Everyone saved them and treated them like they were gold, now there are plenty of pristine examples available and no one cares. I wouldn't buy one for more then $5. I also wouldn't touch Mike Trout cards. Yes, he won the MVP last year, but he's also regressing. Pitchers figured out he has trouble with the high fastball and his strikeout numbers soared. His stolen bases have gone down every year. He's peaked. I'm sure he'll put up above average numbers for years to come, but not consistent with what he has previously. See: Albert Pujols. He's an all time great definetly, but he peaked and settled in to above average Jay Buhner like numbers. In the short term, I would go for Bryce Harper cards. He's due. He has way to much raw talent. I just paid about $75 for a 2008 Upper Deck rookie graded by BGS at a 9. It's a risk, sure. But it's way, way below what his cards were worth when they were first introduced and folks have moved on to the next big thing. The stupid fucker keeps getting hurt running into walls and shit, but he's also only 22 and has the talent to have 35 home runs by the All Star break. And then idiots will pay twice what I just payed for the card. I hope. Then again, I'm sitting on a huge pile of Erubiel Durazo cards which are worth diddly squat. Thank God I flipped enough of them years ago that I don't have that much money wrapped up in them.
Made it halfway through the 'Theory of Everything.' They should have called it the 'Theory of How To Fucking Bore You To Tears.' There's a documentary about Hawking that was far more entertaining on HBO or Netflix, I forget which.
Super fun talk about trading cards. Meanwhile, I was doing a boob rating check in the bar bathroom . 4 chicks with tops off and rating and talking about our tits. Me, at 50, won best nipples. Girl that's 41 wins best girth. The 30 and 40 yr old girls got...hey, they're nice. They were nice. I've seen a lot... Continue on with your cards.
This past summer I was on a construction site when a black fellow walked up to me. He asked me if I had seen the super, I had not, then he handed me a baseball card and asked me to pass it on to him. It was Rickey Henderson, he'd autographed the card. I didn't recognize him until I looked at the card and he was already walking away. I googled the card's value, I thought it was surprisingly low.
The worst thing about being at a party with people who have just returned from an Ebola zone is that if anyone vomits, you're all on lockdown until serology comes back.